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LUG Meetings

Meet up with Montana Linux people on IRC. We currently gather at the #ubuntu-montana room on the freenode network. Stop in and say "hello" or even ask/answer some questions. Don't have to be a Ubuntu user either. Or use the web-based chat client.

BillingsLUG
The BillingsLUG hasn't had a meeting in a while but they are hoping to start back up real soon. Really.

BozemanLUG
The BozemanLUG meets on the FIRST Thursday of the month at 7PM

MSU-Bozeman
EPS Building, Rm 259
Bozeman, MT
Used to be the LAST Thursday, but we changed it.

Kir posted a blog entry regarding Andrew Morton's keynote from the LinuxWorld Expo 2007 keynote (from August as seen a few items below) wanting to get a transcript of what Andrew said about containers and OpenVZ... so I spent about 30 minutes making it so. Here's what Andrew said:

"The one prediction I am prepared to make... is that over the next 1 to 2 years there'll be quite a lot of focus in the Linux kernel on... the core of the Linux kernel... on the project which has many names. Some people call it containerization... others will call it operating system virtualization... other people will call it resource management. It's a whole cloud of different features which have different applications.

While it is obvious that I've been using OpenVZ for some time now, a lesser known fact is that I've also been using Linux-VServer at work. Linux-VServer is a lot like OpenVZ only different. Huh? Well, Linux-VServer is also a form of OS Virtualization but rather than the term "container" the Linux-VServer folks prefer the term, "security context".

From a feature and operational perspective, Linux-VServer and OpenVZ are very similar but from a design and implementation standpoint, they are quite different. The Linux-VServer setup I've been using at work pre-dates my employment there and it is quite old (based on the Linux 2.4.x kernel)... but it has been running flawlessly so I haven't seen the need to update it. As a result, I've really fallen behind with Linux-VServer's development and how it has changed, matured, and added features over the last couple of years.

Ken Dyke asked me at the BozemanLUG meeting the other evening... if I had found any more good technical videos on Google. I usually search every day... but somehow hadn't found anything worth sharing for a while.

Practical MythTV by Michael Still, Aug. 16, 2007

The second video is about DTrace which is the kernel debugger for Sun's Solaris... but given the coverage on LWN in an article entitled, On DTrace envy which talks about DTrace vs. Linux's SystemTap kernel debugger... more info in DTrace is probably a good thing.

I just recently started playing around with installing desktop environments inside of a VPS. It takes a little work as you really don't want to accidentally replace your vzdev package with a distro's stock udev package. Anyway, the video below was resized for embedded flash playback and there is no sound. If you want a MUCH higher quality video, you can can right-click and save as: openvz-via-vnc-with-migration.ogg.

Read the full article for the embedded video because I didn't want it to stretch out the front page.

I took my video camera hoping to do some interviews but given the fact that my first experience using it led to a visit from security telling me I couldn't record anything but the booth I was in... I was a bit wary about recording after that.

Along came a guy (although I didn't catch his name) doing what he called, "50 second .org videos". I latched onto that... and filmed him filming several of the .org booths.

Enjoy if you can a mish-mash of 36 minutes worth video clips. You'll see the following booths: Fedora, OpenVZ, Joomla, The Linux Foundation, Pentaho, and Ubuntu... although technically the Ubuntu booth was not in the .org Pavilion.

I got Carla's permission (from SWsoft) to film the presentation she did on Virtuozzo at the Intel booth... but she let me know up front that it was geared more towards how Intel and SWsoft work together rather than a general presentation on Virtuozzo. That part is about 10 minutes and it isn't too bad.

Got to the booth at 9 AM. Got the laptops setup. Set out the DVDs. Kir had some flyers he had printed at Kinkos... and the banner was hung nicely.

All five of us were there in the booth today so we all got a chance to take turns talking to people. The booth had quite a bit of activity. We gave away all 25 DVDs we had burned within the first few hours so Kostya and Warren were busy burning DVDs on both of their laptops for most of the day to keep up with demand.

The basic question everyone asked was... how is OpenVZ different from VMware... or Xen? I got rather good at explaining OpenVZ's seven main points.